Tuesday, March 3, 2015

2015 Winter Gathering

Our 2015 Winter gathering was a hit!

Alumni and folks from the community came by our annual winter gathering hosted by our friends over at Assembly to see what’s new with the crew, brush up on food justice, and sample some tasty treats this week.

We enthusiastically greeted all of our guests and got the chance to hang with other FoodWhat alumni who came out to support the event. As always, we warmly welcomed our guests with a vibrant selection of snacks. Butternut squash soup, freshly popped popcorn from the FoodWhat fields, endless kiwi slices, and breads and spreads. To satisfy the sweet teeth throughout the night, we served up scoops from the Penny Ice Creamery all night.

We brought everyone in after some time to chat to introduce our crew hosting the evening. We told them how we started off as interns with FoodWhat and worked up to farm stand managers and community organizers teaching others about food justice.

Then we dispersed to the tables with snacks in hand to talk a little more. At each table, we pulled slips of conversation starters out of jars to fuel some food-related conversation among the crew and the community.

After the warm up conversation, it was time to talk some food justice and nutrition. Our crew got the word across through hosting four workshops. First, we had a public speaking workshop with Doron to practice feeling confident talking in front of others while paying attention to posture and annunciation.

We also dissected food labels by looking into the sneaky ways processed sugars hide in many go-to beverages. Counting out how many spoonfuls of processed sugar it takes to sweeten up even small quantities of refreshments, we looked to drinks with natural sugars in them for a refreshing kick. We served up some pomegranate juice and bubbly water as proof of equal deliciousness!

Looking at the big picture, we checked out Trace your Taco to see a taco’s journey through the food system. We learned about all the details, ranging from how far our food travels before it gets to our plate to how the animals are treated before they get to us.

For a more competitive edge, we played Fast Food Jeopardy! As our opposing teams competed for the most points, we revealed all of the hidden details of the industry.

After learning a little something more about food systems, we all came back together in one group. Everyone from the FoodWhat crew sat in a circle, on the hard ground. We started talking about how sitting in the sun, on the ground is a little rough despite being able to learn and work in fresh air. It can be a little rough.

The crowd caught on pretty quick. We shared our mission to build an outdoor classroom for a more comfortable and effective space to learn throughout our Summer days working hard in the fields. Everyone put their hands up in support of FoodWhat to raising the roof!

Our mission stimulated a lot of excitement to hear about the growth we’re continuing to make on our farm. Some people made pledges and donations right away! Stoked on the new potential for the fields, we thanked everyone for joining us and closed out the night.